Currently I Am Periodically Suffering 3 Out Of 7 Common Cold Symptoms

Yes, that is an accurate artist's rendering of me you are looking at here, including the receding hairline.

In the middle of the night, the past three nights, I have found myself suddenly awake and coughing.

Along with a sore throat.

I get up and drink some water and the sore throat goes away.

Then I lay back in bed wondering if I am coming down with a cold for the first time in years.

My other cold indicating symptom, the past three days, has been getting a headache in the afternoon, which then abates around the time the sun leaves for the day.

Is my extremely highly evolved immune system fighting off a cold virus, somewhat successfully, is what I think may be happening.

Or am I just suffering from being denied any high speed Tandy Hills hill hiking or mountain bike riding for well over a month?

All I know for certain is I do not want to go into full blown cold mode. It has been a long time since that has happened to me, but the memory of the misery is still fresh.

And I certainly do not want to go into flu mode.  That has not happened since early in the 1990s and was the most miserably sick I have ever been.

I think I need a strong dose of the sun's rays warming me up in the outer world. I have no idea where I can find such a thing right at this particular point in time at this particular point on the planet....

Am I Coming Down With A Cold In The Texas HEAT?

I have not been sick in years. No flu, no cold, no nothing.

A few summers ago I did have a bad allergy bout that I thought was a cold at first.

That may be what I have going on now. An allergic reaction to something.

Or I may have a cold. I do not believe I have ever had a cold in summer before. With the temperature over 100 every day it would seem that cold viruses would be withered from the heat, just like everything else.

Right now, at a few minutes after 5, we are being heated to 104.7 degrees HOT. A full blown cold in these HOT temperatures would be a miserable thing, I would think.

My symptoms are a slightly sore throat, a burning sensation in my nasal passages, slight eye irritation and an overall crankiness that is at a higher level of crankiness than my usual ongoing crankiness.

Could Fort Worth's bad air pollution and me exposing myself to it, daily, be what's causing the burning sensations? Anyone else having these symptoms?

I remember having a sore throat when I flew up to Washington in July of 2008, thinking it was caused by the air that I breathe here and that it would quickly get better breathing Washington's much cleaner air. But, it took a week for the cleaner air to clear up the sore throat.

Maybe I am just still recovering from Saturday night's saloon hopping with Elsie Hotpepper. Lord knows a night with Elsie Hotpepper exposes one to a lot of unexpected toxins.